1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for opening and closing a door that allows a door of a vehicle to be slidably moved by releasing a door holding unit by a rotating a door operation lever.
2) Description of the Related Art
Typical apparatus for opening and closing a door includes a fully closing holding unit that holds a slide door to be fully closed, an inside knob that is operated by a driver or a passenger, and a door operation lever that transmits a rotation of the inside knob to the fully closing holding unit as the door opening operation. In the apparatus, the fully closing holding unit, the inside knob, and the door operation lever are connected to one another by link rods or wire cables. The door operation lever rotates when the inside knob is operated to open the slide door, and the fully closing holing unit is released in response to the rotation of the door operation lever. The slide door can be thereby slidably moved to be opened.
Such apparatus that includes the fully closing holing unit, the inside knob, and the door operation lever independently requires not only an operation to install each of components individually but also an operation to connect these components by the link rods or the wire cables. As a result, an assembly of the apparatus becomes considerably complicated. To solve this problem, a technology that provides an apparatus for opening and closing a door that includes the inside knob and the door operation lever that are integrated is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-182402.
Since the inside knob and the door operation lever can be installed to the slide door as the integral unit in such apparatus, the installation of the apparatus can be facilitated. However, the apparatus still requires the operation to connect the inside knob to the door operation lever in the integral unit.